About
“Testing Patience: Prelude to Interdisciplinary Study” is a project funded by a generous grant from the Templeton Religion Trust.
Most people in anglophone cultures today are familiar with the phrase, “Patience is a virtue.” But arguably the cultural understanding and appreciation of patience does not go far beyond this, even though patience has figured on the list of virtues in moral philosophy in both the east and west dating back to the first millennium AD.
On reflection, patience may be of increasing importance in an age of religious and political polarization, at a time when snap judgments about others lead to large-scale actions and movements, for instance, disaffiliation from religious institutions or cutting off those of different religions from one’s social circles. Patience seems to hold the promise of paving a pathway to flourishing in an age of religious and ethical pluralism. But further exploration of what patience is and how it may contribute to human flourishing is needed.
Our project will research questions that are foundational and necessary preliminaries to interdisciplinary study of patience. The overarching aim is to produce a cohesive body of research coming out of a cohesive conversation between top philosophers in several subdisciplines about the testing of a philosophically viable conception of the virtue of patience.